1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for acquiring media assets (e.g., MP3 files, MOV files or other media assets).
2. Discussion of the Background
Today many cell phones have the capability to play music files in the MP3 format. While playing the file is relatively easy getting the music onto the phone is often tricky and varies tremendously from phone to phone. Not only do phones from each manufacturer use proprietary cables to connect the phone to the PC, often even phones from the same manufacturer use different cables. Increasingly however phones from varying manufacturers are making use of a common memory card format call micro SD. Other forms of memory cards are also in use but the total number of formats is less than 5 with Micro SD, Mini SD, Memory Stick Micro and standard SD cards being the most common. One issue with these cards is that the cards are very small and easily dropped while inserting or removing them from a phone. Card readers do exist for these cards but typically the mobile cards like the micro SD card is first put into an adaptor that transforms the card into an SD card size. Then the SD card is inserted into an SD card reader which is then plugged into the standard USB port on a computer.
To be able to deliver content to a cell phone at retail, a number of challenges emerge—First to have an individual cable set for each manufacturer of cell phones and then specific cables for each phone results in an impractical configuration. To add to the confusion, even if a cable could be provided, each phone has different software that would have to be initiated to enable the phone to interface to an in store Kiosk and thus initiate the delivery of content. One solution would be to deliver the content first to the phone's memory card. This then brings up the issue of the card size and the high potential of dropping and loosing the memory card.